Genre Bending

So.

I have a question.

Image: irunoninsulin.com

It’s concerned with genre, and why a particular book is considered to belong to one genre over another. It’s also concerned with what you expect to find, as a reader, in a book which proclaims itself to belong to a particular genre.

As I’ve said before, I love Young Adult books, and also stories written for children. These are the kinds of books I primarily read, and I’d like to think I’m fairly familiar with these genres. In most of the Young Adult books I’ve read recently, though, I’ve noticed a huge focus on complicated love and sexual relationships between characters, and a tendency to make those relationships a central part of the plot. In fact, sometimes these relationships are the plot! I wonder whether I’m behind the times a little in my taste, because those sort of relationships aren’t necessarily something I always look for in books that I would consider ‘Young Adult’. I wonder, too, if that’s because I tend to favour fantasy/SF type books, as opposed to contemporary Young Adult fiction – sometimes I think contemporary Young Adult stories have more of a focus on issues such as sexuality and love, which I suppose makes sense.

Before anyone thinks I’m a prude, I have to make it clear that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with books aimed at young adults dealing with complicated emotions and physical relationships. These themes are extremely important to young readers, and of course the literature should reflect this. Stories dealing with the complexities of love and relationships can be very affecting, emotional and beautiful, and if these issues are important to the characters in a story, then of course they should be included and dealt with. But if a book is written with teenage characters which doesn’t place sexual relationships, or an emotional, conflicted or complex love story, at the heart of the plot, I’m beginning to wonder if it should bear the label ‘Young Adult fiction’ at all. There’s been a lot of talk recently in publishing and writing circles about a new genre called ‘New Adult’, the definition of which I’m a little hazy on. It seems to be a genre encompassing books which are (broadly) about people in their late teens and early twenties, navigating sexual relationships and adult problems (like bills, careers, living away from their parents, and so on) – a sort of stepping stone between Young Adult and general fiction aimed at adults, perhaps. I wonder where the defining line between Young Adult and New Adult lies, and how a story is classified as being one or the other.

I’ve just finished reading a book which is amazingly well written, beautifully plotted, and fantastically enjoyable, but its protagonist is a 17-year-old girl who has had at least one significant relationship in the past, and who, during the course of the book, realises she has a strong physical attraction to an older male character who, for various reasons, she cannot be with. Her sexuality is one of her most important characteristics, and her desire to build a life and a future with the male character is one of the driving forces behind the book. She also feels the need to free her family from a terrible burden, but her connection to the man seems just as important to her, and her feelings for him certainly drive most of the story. The book I’m working on has a 16-year-old protagonist, so she’s only one year younger than the protagonist in the book I’ve just read, but the two stories couldn’t be farther apart in terms of the way the young female protagonists think about themselves, their bodies, feelings and desires. The book I’m working on is one I’d consider to be Young Adult, and the one I’ve read is also Young Adult. However, they are very different indeed. So different, in fact, that I wonder if they should belong to the same genre at all.

I suppose my question is this: if you’re a reader of Young Adult fiction, do you expect to find issues relating to sex and sexuality in the story? If the book lacks these things, do you feel it should more rightly be called a children’s book? Maybe this isn’t even worth worrying about, as I’m going to write the stories I want to write, and I’m going to let the character’s development dictate whether their sexuality should be an important part of their portrayal, but I’m just curious.

I’ve never really been a big fan of romance novels, and I don’t have a huge interest in writing romantic stories. I’m more about the adventure! So, if the genre I love is changing to accommodate more romance and a greater focus on love, I think I’ll be a little bit sad about it. Or, perhaps it’s an indicator that I need to read more widely in the genre – I’m sure this tendency doesn’t apply to every single Young Adult book being published at the moment.

And maybe it’s an indicator that I need to ‘get with the program’, as the young folk say these days!

Anyone have any opinions about genre, genre expectations, and the divisions between children’s, Young Adult, New Adult, and general adult fiction books? I’d love to hear ’em.

My favourite teenage lovers!
Image: fanpop.com

Human Nature

This evening, I had the house to myself. I don’t like being at home alone, so I took my mind off the fact that my husband was away by watching a couple of movies we’d recorded over the past few weeks. One was ‘Moon’, which I’d seen before and really enjoyed, and one was a golden oldie, ‘The Running Man’, which (somehow!) I’d managed to miss until now. If you haven’t seen these movies, you might want to be aware that there are some spoilers below.

I knew I’d find a reason to put an Arnie picture on the blog eventually!

Another reason I took some time out to watch these movies was because I had a bit of a fraught day yesterday, WiP-wise. I was doing some research into submissions to agents and publishers, writing query letters, and so forth, when it struck me that my book is long. Really long. Too long, in point of fact. I had an idea that I was running a little towards the long end of the ‘accepted’ word count, but figured that most of my favourite books in the YA-fantasy genre are about the same length as the work I’ve produced. However, it would appear not. If I’m to believe what I’ve discovered during the course of my research, my book is about 50,000 words too long. I’ve been thinking about what I can do to fix this ever since, and my brain is on a loop, trying to suggest solutions to itself.

Hence, the movies.

As well as being short, both movies are tightly packed with action (‘Running Man’) and tension (‘Moon’). They both tell a good story in a small space, without wasting time on irrelevance. Perhaps I only noticed this because my mind is twisting itself in knots about this very issue at present, but it doesn’t make it any less true! Also, they both had lots to say about human nature, and what it means to be human, I thought – something that’s important to me, but also to anyone who wants to write a book. Thinking about people, and why they do the things they do, is intrinsic to creating characters.

‘The Running Man’ – at least, the movie version, as I haven’t read the book yet – is (we have to face it) very similar in message and tone to ‘The Hunger Games’. I’m not complaining about this. I found ‘The Hunger Games’ profound, at times, in its message about humanity and what it means to be a human being, too. If the world really did descend into a dystopian hell, and if we really were living through the fallout of a horrible war, or a devastating economic crisis (hang on…!), would we take out our frustrations and horrors at our own daily lives on watching others suffer and die? What would it take to push humanity over that particular precipice? As I watched ‘The Running Man’, I asked myself the question: ‘If this was real, would I be a rabid viewer and consumer of the TV show, and would I be cheering as the stalkers chased down the contestants, or would I be a ‘conscientious objector’, refusing to take part in something so inhuman?’

Of course, I’m glad that there’s no way for me to answer that question, because such a TV show doesn’t exist. Not yet, at least. I wondered why people would take such extreme enjoyment in watching a show like that, and why they’d idolise the show’s host and crave the logos, merchandise, and other accoutrements, and concluded it had to be because of their own feelings of powerlessness and disenfranchisement. They’d crave the branded clothing and the memorabilia in order to prove to everyone that they were part of the ‘in’ crowd, not to be hunted; they were of the powerful class, and not the oppressed. But maybe it’s not even as deep as that. Maybe people, as a whole, just enjoy watching other people (or beings, maybe) suffer. I really hope that’s not the reason, though. Maybe it’s because they’re thinking ‘if those people over there are suffering, then the focus is not on me. If they’re the ones being chased and hunted and killed, then there’s nobody chasing me.’ I’d love to think I’d be the one standing outside the system, and I’d be the one running the underground resistance, but it’s hard to know. I think I have more compassion for my fellow human than the people in ‘The Running Man’ seemed to have, but even I know it’s difficult to be the dissenting voice when you’re living under a frightening regime; a regime where, to stand out and live a different message, could spell death. Sadly, we don’t have to look to fiction for those sorts of situations – those kinds of oppressive regimes are in place all over the world. Perhaps ghoulish game-shows are the next step in the process.

‘Moon’ is an entirely different film, but it takes on a similar question: what constitutes a human? If, in ‘The Running Man’, we were faced with a two-tier version of humanity – a tier in which people are hunted to death, and a tier that sits back and watches it happen – ‘Moon’ uses the concept of cloning to explore the same idea. We’re faced with two, and then three copies of the same person, all of which look identical and are ‘programmed’ with the same memories, loves, hates, and fears – but which, despite all that, are still seen as individuals. Even if we didn’t have the visual cues to help us distinguish one version of ‘Sam’ from the other (one has a facial wound, and quickly begins to display symptoms of illness, while the other remains healthy throughout), it would still be clear. They are very different men, despite technically being exactly the same. So, what makes them different? Is a clone merely a copy of a ‘real’ person, or is the clone a person in his/her own right? What does it take to make a living, breathing, sentient body a ‘human being’? One of the clones in this movie even offers to die to help another clone to live – an act of nobility that few ‘proper’ human beings would be able to match. Again, though this film is SF and not intended to be ‘realistic’, it has a message for our world. Who judges the fitness of others to call themselves ‘human’, and who have we placed on the pedestal, and to whom have we given the power, to make calls on others’ right to live, or exist, as they please? We live in a world in which regimes exist which attempt to argue that certain individuals are lesser than others, that whole groups of people are unimportant because of gender, race, orientation, gender identity, or whatever the case may be. Why have we done this, and who has the power to make these calls?

Well. Those are my thoughts for today. Perhaps I should just learn to watch a movie, and not take every second of footage apart for meaning. That’s what trying to write a book does to you, though – it makes you analyse everything for structure, meaning, motivation, and symbolism. It’s also hard to stop doing it once you’ve started!

So, after all my procrastinating, I still have some big book-related decisions to make. Wish me luck! Hopefully I’ll be able to take some of my analytical skills to my own book, and whittle it away to its essentials. Here’s hoping.

What Sort of Writer Am I?

My body clock is all out of whack this week. I’m up late again, buzzing with energy at completely the wrong time of day/night, and I’ve no idea why. It could be something to do with stress, maybe – the results of the writing competition (which I keep going on about) are due to be released soon, and I’m pretty wound up about it. I have zero expectation of being shortlisted, of course, but I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t a bit nervous about the outcome. It’s natural to be curious and excited about it, even if you’re pretty sure it’ll have nothing to do with you. I’m looking forward to seeing who does succeed in being shortlisted, and how things work out for all those who entered. It’s wonderful to think that this one competition has resulted in hundreds of people, all over the country (and possibly the world) knuckling down and finally writing the novel they’ve always wanted to write. Just the thought of it is enough to make me feel like I’m crackling with static electricity! It’ll be great once the shortlist is announced, because I’ll be able to move on with my life – I’ll get some chapters of the WiP up on my blog, perhaps, and get some feedback on it. I’ll also start submitting it to agents and publishers, and start working on my next project. I’m anticipating all that with happy excitement, and it’s wonderful to feel that way. I don’t always feel that way, so when these moments of euphoria come around, I tend to make the most of ’em.

I’ve been thinking over the past day or two about my next project. I finished my edits on the WiP today (including rewriting that scene I talked about yesterday, the one between Maraika and her father – it works so much better than before!), and I’m planning to start outlining my next idea tomorrow. I’ve already described how I’ve realised the story I plan to write next would work much better as a book for younger readers (i.e. 8 years old and up) than for a Young Adult audience, and I’ve been evaluating myself as a writer ever since I had this realisation.

Several years ago, when I began work on the new project (let’s call it ‘Jeff’, for ease of reference!) I had it in mind as a Young Adult novel, just because I saw myself as an aspiring Young Adult writer. It seemed like a natural assumption. I wrote nearly 34,000 words on it before abandoning the idea, but something about it always stayed with me. I liked the characters I’d created, and I liked the narrative style I’d used, which was not only different from anything I’d ever used before, but also different from anything I’d ever read before. It’s languished on my computer ever since, but I always intended to revisit it. I read the whole thing through the other day for the first time in years, and – putting aside the awful writing – it was nice to be back in that world again. Reading it again made me see that its failure was partly a result of the fact that I was trying to shoehorn it into a genre that it wasn’t really comfortable being in. (Partly, it’s to do with my failure to plot it out fully – but that’s another blog post!) Jeff, the protagonist, is only twelve (turning thirteen) in the book – he’s barely into secondary school. He’s young. The voice I was giving him was just too old, and too knowing. He’s a funny, warm and adorable creature, but he speaks with the mind of an 19-year-old, and it just… clanged. It’s discordant. I’m looking forward to resurrecting Jeff and giving him his proper voice, and maybe his story will flow a bit easier.

Do you identify with a particular ‘genre’ of writing, if you’re a writer? Looking over my list of Works-in-Progress and fragments of ideas, I get the impression that I’m actually a writer of children’s books masquerading as a YA writer. Most of my ideas would be happier between the covers of a book aimed at 8/9 year old readers, I think, even though I love to read both types of book. I read David Walliams’ ‘The Boy in the  Dress’ the other night; it’s aimed at young readers, but I found it profoundly moving and utterly lovely. That’s a skill I’d love to have – the skill of making a story which is definitively for children, but which can touch the hearts and minds of adults, too. I think children’s and YA writing do go hand in hand, but there are significant differences between them which need to be respected; I certainly don’t think it’s impossible to write across both genres, and I hope that I’ll be able to spend the rest of my life doing just that. I feel like my mind has been opened a little wider, though, just by reading over an old Work-in-Progress, and that more room for ideas has been created inside it – but, as Terry Pratchett once warned, ‘be careful not to open your mind too much, in case your brain falls out.’ I hope I’m not in danger of that! But it does feel strange – liberating, exciting, and wonderful, too – to have a conclusion like ‘there is more than one way in which you can write!’ strike your brain.

Do you identify with a genre, as a reader or a writer? Do you think you could change? Or, am I talking total hogwash, and is all writing more or less the same? I’d love to hear from you.